The 2018 OEPA Inaugural Annual Meeting was a huge success and exceeded all expectations, according to President Mike Cantrell and Chairman Dewey Bartlett, Jr. “The response from independent producers and vendors alike was simply overwhelming”, said President Mike Cantrell. “When you start something new like this, it’s like taking the risk of drilling a dry hole, you just don’t know what you are going to get until you put the bit in the ground.”

The day-long event took place on June 1st at the Will Rogers Theater in Oklahoma City and featured speakers and panelists on a variety of topics important to small vertical well producers in Oklahoma. Speakers consisted of Corporation Commissioner Dana Murphy, Senator Greg Treat, Senator James Leewright, Representative Kyle Hilbert, Representative Kevin Wallace, Tim Baker, Tim Munson, and more. Over 15 Oklahoma legislators attended to network and learn more about our issues.

Moderator & Representative Zack Taylor said he has never seen such a crowd of small producers so attentive and packed into every session. ” It was incredible to look out into the crowd and see over 150 attendees, of which 90% were actual producers,” said Taylor. “I have never been to an oil and gas conference with this many attendees participating in each session.”

The room was also filled with exhibit booths of sponsors and vendors of the industry. Mickey Raney, Impact Energy, said, “Thank you for all the work and effort of putting the OEPA annual meeting together. It was well done and the panels and speakers were very informative. It also was held in Oklahoma and I felt like I was actually with the group that had independent producers interest in mind. We look forward to sponsoring again next year.”

Goetz Schuppan said he already has lost 15 older, vertical oil and natural gas wells because of nearby horizontal drilling activity, and he is preparing for much more damage in the near future.

Schuppan is president of Hennessey-based Singer Oil Co., which operates older wells in Kingfisher, Blaine and Garfield counties in the heart of the booming STACK play.

“So far, operators have been putting in one horizontal well per section. Now they’re putting in eight or nine more wells on the same section,” Schuppan said. “Some of our wells that survived before will not survive that kind of onslaught.”

Schuppan spoke Friday at the inaugural annual meeting of the Oklahoma Energy Producers Alliance, a group formed to represent the state’s vertical well operators, which tend to be small or family-owned companies. The group has grown to more than 300 members, most of whom attended Friday’s meeting.

Schuppan blames hydraulic fracturing on nearby new horizontal wells for flooding his decades-old vertical wells with high pressures and large amounts of water. In at least two cases, water and pressure from the nearby horizontal well caused Schuppan’s production storage tank to overflow.